Lera sat up. “After your father had worked there all his life?”
Jason went on quickly, as if he wanted to get it all over with. “I was hired at the Department of Public Health, thank the Benevolent Ones, but my father could only find work in a coal mine. He came to join me four years later, once I was making enough to support us both, but by then he’d got the black lung disease. A lot of miners did.” He looked at his hands, and his voice grew quieter. “He never blamed me. Not a word.”
Lera fidgeted unhappily, wishing she hadn’t asked him anything. She didn’t feel like finishing the rest of her rum.
“I’m sorry I made you bring all that up,” she said.
He gave her a sharp ironical look from beneath dark brows. “You didn’t make me. I told you because I wanted to, because I’ve never shared that with anyone and—well, high time.” Breathing out, he leaned back in his chair. “But now it’s your turn.”
“What d’you mean?” Lera was on edge at once. If he asked about her scar, he’d be out of the cabin before he could blink twice.
He looked mildly puzzled at her reaction. “I mean, you said you wanted to be distracted. What did you want me to distract you from?”
Oh, that. “Kovir, of course. I’m worried about him.”
Jason frowned. “He’s a trained scout, isn’t he? And he has that shark.”
Lera felt her mouth twist. “He’s trained all right. Seawatch trains children not to feel fear, and not being afraid is a bad thing. Do you know what I mean?”
The frown had grown deeper, but now he looked as though he was thinking the matter through rather than being puzzled. “It means you get yourself into dangerous situations, because you don’t have that intuition to hold you back.”
“Yes.” She was relieved he understood. “As for the shark—well, those children train with sharks and only sharks, so they’re a whole lot better at understanding fish behavior than figuring out how people think. That’s dangerous too.”
Jason nodded, but said nothing. She felt disappointed, though she wasn’t sure why—surely she hadn’t expected him to make her feel less worried. Better for him to be silent than to say something empty like “There, there, it will be all right”, anyway.
“You know,” he said, and she looked up, surprised out of her brooding, “what you’re doing is probably more than anyone’s done for that boy before.”
That was startling too. “What I’m doing?” She spread her free hand to indicate she wasn’t doing anything. “I’m sitting here warm and dry while he’s risking his life out there alone.”
“Not alone, unless his shark went back to Denalay. And you care about him enough to think about his safety and wait for him to return. You’re a good friend.”
Warmth prickled beneath her face, not the self-consciousness she felt when people looked at her for the first time or the phantom twinges beneath the scar, but a growing flush that made her drop her gaze. She couldn’t think of anything to say, so she lifted the mug and swallowed a mouthful that spread deep and hot through her belly.
“Have the rest.” She held the mug out, and after a moment he got up. His fingers barely touched hers as he took the mug from her hands, but an odd quiver still ran over her skin at the contact. She forced herself not to react, but when he sat back down and drank, she found herself thinking of his mouth where hers had been on the mug.
The cabin was small and closed and dark around them both, the sound of the engine a steady thrum in the background. He tilted the mug to drain it, his head tipping back so she saw where the shadow beneath his unshaven jaw gave way to smooth skin that worked as he swallowed. She dug her fingers into the top of the iron-banded chest. Talk about something else.
“How did you figure it out?” she said. “About the Sea of Weeds, I mean.”
Jason leaned over to set the mug on the floor, then stretched slowly, catlike, as if he had been in a small cage for the last few hours. Wood creaked and joints popped as he did so.
“I grew up working on a farm, remember?” he said. “There was a bull and a herd of cows, like the Sea itself and those derelicts. Sexual dimorphism.”
“That means the male can’t perform, right?” Lera said, wondering whether the poor bull hadn’t been capable with the cows.
Jason chuckled. “No, it means the male of the species looks obviously different from the female.”
“Oh.” She felt like a fool, but hell, she hadn’t had the benefit of his education and somehow it didn’t irritate her that he was amused. Since the Sea—or its guardian, the Green Man—was male, it would want females, each installed safely in her own place, joined by green chains to the great mass of her mate below. But like any male with a herd or harem, it wanted more.
The silence between them wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable, but the air felt warm and strange, prickling with anticipation. Her blood was warmer, and she fought an urge to shift restlessly on the chest.
“I’d better go.” Jason got to his feet. “Thank you for the drink.”
“Thanks for keeping me company.” She wished he would stay, but she couldn’t go any further—not when she was on edge, waiting for Kovir—and she was half-afraid if he did stay, they’d either end up doing something she regretted or he would get her to talk about her past too. Which would also be regrettable.
“You know,” she said as he went to the door, trying to keep her voice light and casual as if she was remarking on something quite unimportant, “you’ve never asked me how I got this scar.”
He paused with his fingers on the handle, brows tilted up. “If you want me to know, you’ll tell me—and I’ll tell no one. Nothing like a career in the health department to teach you about privacy regarding other people’s physical matters.” The faint smile touched his mouth again and was gone. “Good night, Captain.”
Then he was gone too, and the door swung quietly shut.
Thirty feet beneath the surface of the water, Kovir inhaled and exhaled steadily through his mouth as the shark carried him onward. He’d been trained to treat his work seriously rather than thinking of it as frivolous fun, but he couldn’t help enjoying the rebreather. It was wonderful not to have to deal with the cycle of hyperventilating and staying down for two minutes at a time, always alert for the dull tightening in his temples and the growing heat in his chest that told him his single stored breath was running out and they had to resurface.
It was even better to know he was slipping so easily past the enemy’s defenses. The sea was very calm, but he didn’t need to worry about being noticed at all. The shark put on a burst of speed that carried him to Princeps in a matter of minutes. Astride her back, seated behind her dorsal fin, he locked into her senses to be certain of where they were.
She couldn’t see the ship’s hull in the dark, but she heard and smelled and felt it. Rotting food and wastes, tar and wood. Sensation prickled along nerves that ran the length of her fifteen-foot body, making her aware of the movements of every living thing in the vicinity. To him, it made the ocean look more vast than the night sky, filled with stars that were fish darting out of her way. For a moment, his consciousness was melded with hers so deeply that he sensed a constant sparklike flicker behind her dorsal fin, and knew it was the pump of his own heart.
He rose from lock to hold, where he could guide her without being overwhelmed by all the stimuli she took for granted. She made out a diffuse glow far above them, diluted and spread through the dark water but enough for him to know there were lanterns. Not that those mattered. If she could detect a heartbeat, she could find a fuse thirty feet below the waves.
He took her on a slow circuit around the ship, searching for anything out of the ordinary, and found them back at the stern where they had started. Odd. Could they have missed the fuse? Didn’t seem likely. If it had been a thin cord, perhaps, but it would have to be encased in a tube providing it with enough air t
o burn all the way down to the depths, and the tube would have to be thick, so a curious fish couldn’t bite through it.
Now that he came to think about it, why hadn’t Princeps stationed a guard at the fuse? Obviously no one could protect it for its entire length, but someone could have watched from a boat. Then again, such a guard might be enough of a giveaway where the fuse was, so perhaps they had deliberately left it alone.
If there was a fuse at all, though, why hadn’t the shark found it?
The anchor chain.
The shark went straight for the smell of iron, because it occurred to him that if the crew wanted to be certain they could find the fuse easily, it might be attached to the anchor chain. Maybe in the center of it, which would be clever. Though in the dark, he couldn’t see the chain, and both the shark’s bulk and his leg struck it as she swam past.
He grabbed it, hoping no one on board had seen it jerk from the impact, then felt it carefully, drew his knife and jabbed at it until steel scraped through the softer metal. He couldn’t see anything, but he didn’t think the fuse was there either.
The shark swam onward, lazily, and he smoothed a gloved hand over her hide, feeling the wide circle of scars where a kraken’s coils had once closed over her. His breath echoed in the confines of the rebreather’s hood. What now? Go back to Nemesis to say he hadn’t been able to find anything?
He didn’t like the idea of that. He wanted to have more to report, one way or another. Maybe the shark had broken the fuse without him realizing it. No, that was ridiculous. If that were the case, a choppy sea could have broken the fuse and saved them all that trouble. Richard Alth would have to be a fool to hang his hopes on such a spiderweb strand.
The shark completed a second course around the ship, her tailfin flicking. She was calm but Kovir was starting to wonder what he had missed. He wished he could take her to the seabed to find out, once and for all, if explosives actually lay there, but Charlotte had been adamant on that point. Go down over a hundred feet and he might never come up.
Kovir had been curious about the exact mechanics of such a demise, so she had explained that people who dived so deep temporarily lost control of their thoughts and emotions until they had been brought back up, acting as though they were drunk or very stupid. That had settled it, because he didn’t dare lose control when he was near the shark. She could be difficult at the best of times, let alone if he was reeling around babbling like a baby.
Something splashed quietly into the water at the prow.
Kovir wouldn’t have heard that with his own ears, but the shark did. A twinge of curiosity thrummed through their link, like a bowstring flicked at one end. One twitch of her tail and she moved forward, swimming faster. Her head turned from side to side as it did when she was hunting, so she could get a more accurate fix on any scents in her way, but she smelled nothing.
Of course not, Kovir thought, disappointed. Someone had probably tossed a piece of broken equipment overboard. Well, he didn’t have too much air left, so once she rounded the prow and turned for the last time, he’d guide her in a straight line back to—
The shark swam straight into something that wrapped itself around him. Lines crisscrossed over his chest and arms. Startled, she turned in midswim, but maneuverable though she was, the fishing net caught on her fins, enfolding her. More and more of the net was drawn into the meshes tightening around her as she spun and struggled.
No. Kovir clamped down on her mind, but as she went limp, he knew she would suffocate before long. She needed to move to breathe. Locked tightly with her, his body pressed to her side, he drew his knife and sawed at the meshes of the net.
They snapped, one by one. Too slow. He made enough of a hole for himself to swim through, but not for a full-grown tiger shark. Ignoring the heat growing in his chest—when they were so closely linked, he felt what she did—he kept cutting away at the net.
The shark sagged in the meshes. He thought he felt her heart punching at her ribs, fighting to be free. The net was invisible, but he grabbed the meshes with his left hand and slashed at them with his right. The shark’s entire body was starving for water, and her desperation clawed at his control. His teeth ached from their clench on the regulator. He might have bitten through it without knowing.
The burning in his lungs was unbearable. It had to be borne. He slashed faster. Didn’t matter if he cut her thick skin. One last time. All right, go! Go!
Their minds wrenched apart so hard that the impact hit him like a fist. The shark twisted violently and plunged away. The few meshes still tangling her broke like threads, and she shot down with the speed she needed to send water streaming back through her gills.
Except Kovir wasn’t with her. Full hands meant he couldn’t grab her dorsal. He shoved the knife back into its sheath, guessing the shark’s struggles had alerted whoever had tossed the net overboard. A moment later he was sure of it. The net began to be reeled in.
Nothing was visible in the dark water, but his right arm was yanked up as the meshes tightened and were drawn in. They snagged his ankle on the way as well. The net immediately around him was shredded, though—partly from his knife and partly from the shark’s dive—and it only pulled him up a few feet before he untangled his limbs. He reached for the shark’s mind and called her back.
There was a muffled sound from above, a sharp whack. Kovir only recognized what it was a second too late. What felt like a white-hot spear drove through his left arm.
The pain shattered all his control. Breath burst from his lungs. The regulator was gone—whether it was snagged in the net or fallen out, he never knew. Blood, there was blood in the water and the shark was coming back—
Groping blindly, his teeth a thin wall between the sea and the last of the air in his chest, he reached for what was embedded in his arm. Sticking out of it. Long and slender, steel and rope. A harpoon, and he guessed the end was barbed. It had driven through his arm and lodged in the rebreather, locked into position so it couldn’t be yanked loose.
It could be yanked back, though, with the rope. It could be hauled up with whatever it had caught. He found that out at once.
The agony almost blinded him. He’d drawn his knife, but it fell from his hand and was gone. His mind found the shark, but he couldn’t calm her, let alone make her save him somehow. She was so close he felt the surge of water her body pushed away, but she’d been unsettled by the net already, and now she smelled blood. All her predator instincts came raging to the surface, but it was his blood. Confusion took over. On top of that, his own fear and pain fed into their link, and she went into a frenzy. He thought he heard her teeth clash together below him, trying to warn off enemies she couldn’t see or understand.
The harpoon dragged him out of the water, tearing through watersuit and flesh as it did so. The last thing he heard were shouts far above his head, and all the lanterns went out.
Chapter Eight
Prisoners
The moment Lera saw the young midshipman’s face, she knew something had gone wrong. “What is it?”
“Captain Garser would like to see you on the deck, ma’am.” Cap tucked under one arm, he stepped back to allow her past him.
She hurried up the ladder. Everyone on the deck was silent, though the way they all looked at her made her more tense as she crossed to the quarterdeck where Garser stood, eyes fixed on something in the water beside the ship.
Over a mile away, windows and lanterns glowed on Princeps, but the sea was dark and calm. Lera couldn’t figure out what he was staring so intently at, but she looked down into the waves as well. A great shape rose from them, a fin slit the surface and the shark plunged down.
She turned to Garser. “What’s happened?”
He shook his head slowly as if to say he didn’t know. “That came back here and there’s no sign of him.”
“How long has he been gone?”
Garser took out a pocket watch. “Almost an hour.”
Which meant the air in the rebreather would have run out. She stared back at the water, willing the shark to surface again and to stay there so she could see any fresh wounds on its hide.
It wasn’t so obliging, but it breached the waves and crashed back into them. Difficult to make out details, but she had the impression it was swimming in tight jerky circles, as though it needed to do something, but wasn’t sure what.
Her throat was tighter, but she forced words through it anyway. “Either he’s dead.” Unity. He’s only seventeen. “Or a prisoner.”
“Anything else you can tell us?” Garser’s tone suggested he’d figured out Kovir’s current condition for himself already.
“No.” Lera didn’t bother to keep the edge from her voice. “What d’you expect me to do, take one look at a shark and know exactly what it did in the past hour?”
Garser’s mouth thinned until it almost disappeared. “Right, then.” He glanced around at his waiting officers. “My cabin.”
They followed him, and since Lera had no intention of being excluded, she did the same. The steward let them all in and lighted more candles while the officers seated themselves around the table and one of them held a chair out for her. She sank into it, trying not to imagine what might have happened to Kovir while she’d been drinking rum with Jason.
At the head of the table, Garser took his cap off, tossed it to the table and ran a hand over his hair in the only sign of weariness he’d showed so far. “The worst-case scenario is that our scout is dead, the fuse is intact and Alth knows exactly what we’re doing. In which case, we have no choice but to attack.”
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